Alejandro Iñárritu Excoriates Mexico’s President Over Trump Visit

Following Donald Trump’s visit Wednesday to Mexico, Oscar winning director Alejandro Iñárritu has joined the chorus of Mexican citizens outraged that Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto invited the GOP Presidential candidate to visit the country. “The invitation by Enrique Peña Nieto to Donald Trump is a betrayal,” said The Revenant and Birdman director in a scathing op-ed published today in Spanish newspaper El Pais.

The invitation, said Iñárritu today, “is to endorse and validate someone who for more than a year insulted, spat upon and threatened us before the whole world.” The visit, he continued, also strengthened “the political campaign of hatred towards us, towards half of humanity, and to the most vulnerable minorities on the planet.”

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Iñárritu also criticized Mexico and the United States as equally culpable in the matter of undocumented immigration, while defending those who relocated to the united states as honest, hard workers. “I have never in my life seen a Mexican begging on a street in the United States,” he wrote. “They work hard and honestly, contributing indispensably and benefiting the economy of both countries. But by mutual convenience, they remain a community of 11 million invisibles.”

Trump has of course made angry opposition to undocumented immigration to the United States a cornerstone of his bid for the presidency, most notoriously kicking off his presidential campaign in 2015 with a speech calling undocumented Mexican immigrants “rapists” and criminals. Since then, he has characterized the issue as largely Mexico’s fault, and among other proposed responses has called for a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border that, he insists, will be paid for by Mexico.

“Trump should have long ago been named by our government “persona non grata” for exalting hatred and division in the country, and distorting this reality without any compassion. American television networks, international corporations, heads of state and countless members of his own party have broken relationships, contracts and any kind of association with this guy,” Iñárritu continued. “After this event and as a Mexican citizen, Enrique Peña Nieto does not represent me and… is not worthy of representing any country.”